Not because I particularly dislike Jamie Dornan — though I wasn’t impressed with his turn as the Sheriff/Huntsman in “Once Upon a Time”, and I don’t think he’s that hot. But now, the leads of the movie are literally unknowns to me, helmed by a director who may be good at what she does, but whose past movies I haven’t had any interest in seeing. I didn’t even read the book — I only read the synopsis, and thought it would be interesting to see how they would adapt such a risque premise without turning it into outright porn. I was willing to give it a chance because Charlie Hunnam was originally in it, and I liked him in Pacific Rim, even if I thought he didn’t fit Christian Grey’s description; now I simply have no more incentive to watch this film.

So at this stage, I can safely say that this will be a “wait for the DVD” type of movie, if I even watch it. Unless the trailer is really fantastic in selling the sizzle, in which I’ll think about it, but I sincerely doubt that will happen. They will also have to successfully sell it to the critics, whose favourable reviews will be more likely to change my mind, and this is the kind of movie that just can’t win over critics, even if they are willing to dumb down their tastes — because this isn’t an arthouse movie, where the explicit sex scenes would be more acceptable in the name of art; nor is it a proper drama, or even a proper romance — which are seldom well-received by critics anyway.

But these sorts of hotly discussed film adaptations from an extremely popular book series also don’t really need critics’ approval to do well at the box office. So long as they don’t create a downright stinker — which I’m fairly certain they won’t; as I said above, the director knows what she is doing — and they keep the costs low for this first installment, which should be easy since the stars are unknowns, they are guaranteed to have an audience in fervent fans of the books, and should do reasonably well for an R-rated film. Just don’t count me in as part of the audience.